The recent elimination of a proposed Town Hall position will prevent Killingly from collecting thousands of dollars in annual back taxes, officials said.

During a recent town meeting, residents narrowly approved cutting a proposed $15,500 per year part-time revenue clerk, a position officials said was necessary because of the tax collector department’s new responsibilities.

Earlier this year, the town agreed to take over collecting taxes for Danielson Borough, a move Revenue Collector Patricia Monahan said increases her staff’s workload.

“We’ve taken steps to ensure the collection is as seamless as possible for the customers,” she said. “But it means twice the number of entries for our department when dealing with a borough tax issue.”

Monahan said two sets of books must be kept to separate borough and town tax information, whether for refunds, vehicle sales or any other tax-related issue. She said those added steps take a great deal of time to complete. In addition, she expects a greater number of taxpayers stopping by in person to pay their bills.

“And without that part-time person, the staff members that would be doing the more challenging work of collecting back taxes will be on counter service,” she said.

Town Manager Bruce Benway estimated $50,000 in back taxes will go uncollected each year without an additional staff member. Monahan said that figure is conservative.

“The time the regular staff will now have to devote to borough taxes will lead to that drop in back tax collection,” Benway said.

Resident Charles Ferland, who made the motion to eliminate the proposed position at Monday’s annual town meeting, said he did it out of a sense of fairness.

Cutting it didn’t put anyone out of a job, he said.

“That was a position that didn’t event exist at that point,” he said. “And it wouldn’t have been fair to take the job away from someone that’s already working for the town.”

Ferland said the town, with a little creative reconfiguring, could still go after tax scofflaws without increasing staff.

“You could assign someone already in town hall to the revenue department on a part-time basis,” he said. “Times have changed and technology has changed. We can’t afford another mouth to feed right now. It will be hard, but it can be done.”